I read, in a now-deleted Garage Journal post, that Apex Tool Group was shutting down Armstrong and Allen hand tool brands.

Details of the happenings can be found via The State, a South Carolina paper.

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According to the paper, production of both brands’ hand tool lines will just cease, and 170 workers located at the Sumpter, SC facility will be out of their jobs by March 31st, 2017.

From The State:

“This is not manufacturing that is moving anywhere else, it is not going to another facility. We are not going to be selling these products,” she said.

She said APEX will focus on its GearWrench brand, which has seen strong growth in the past couple of years.

“By streamlining our mechanic’s hand tools portfolio, we can invest in and grow one brand for this market segment,” Rhoads said.

I like Gearwrench products, and can understand that there is a lot of overlap and potential overlap between Gearwrench and Allen brands. Allen just doesn’t have the same distribution base or modern name recognition, at least from what I’ve seen.

As mentioned in that post, most of my Armstrong experiences are with Craftsman Professional hand tools that were widely believed to have come off of Armstrong tool production lines. Not anymore though, with many/most Craftsman mechanics tools now being made overseas.

But those, and my few other Armstrong tools, are darned good tools.

I hadn’t bought new Armstrong tools in a while, mainly due to high pricing. No matter what I was interested in, there were comparable tools from other USA brands, and at lower pricing.

Has Armstrong innovated in a while? I’m not sure. But I’ve seen steady news of new Gearwrench tools over the years.

I’m finding this news difficult to process. It doesn’t help that there’s not a lot of concrete information to go by.

If Armstrong tool production is indeed ending, I’d find myself saddened by this, before thinking back to recent years and ahead to the next few years. I haven’t bought any new Armstrong tools – well, aside from a small “new old stock” low profile socket set – and I don’t plan to buy any new Armstrong tools.

I’m left wondering – why couldn’t Apex Tool Group have kept the production facility up and running, adding the tools to Gearwrench’s lineup? Maybe spinning the tools as an “Armstrong, by Gearwrench” sub-brand?

Wouldn’t users welcome the news of USA-made Gearwrench tools?

I… just… what?!

What is going on here?

There’s no other information about what’s going on with all this, that I could find. And I guess we won’t find any. Apex Tool Group is owned by Bain Capital, a “global alternative investment firm.” Private companies aren’t obligated to share or release information in the same way as public companies.

Maybe only the production of some Allen and Armstrong tools will be eliminated. But reading the State article several times, along with a few other lower east coast news stories and video clips, it really seems like the 2 brands are being eliminated entirely, as Apex Tool Group seeks to “streamline” their mechanics hand tools portfolio.

What’s your take on this?

If you work at Allen, Armstrong, Gearwrench, or Apex Tool Group and have any added information or insight, please let us know!

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74 Comments

“Apex Tool Group is owned by Bain Capital, a “global alternative investment firm.” Private companies aren’t obligated to share or release information in the same way as public companies.”

That’s your answer right there. Bain Capital’s business model is to buy companies, make those companies borrow heavily to buy back stock, and then put the companies in bankruptcy, having made a profit off the stock buyback.

I guess that “milking a cash cow” is nothing new as a business model – but the Apex Group sort out seems to me to have been a few years in the making after the Danaher – Cooper “joint-venture” was announced.

Allen (as in “allen-wrench” ) – once as synonymous with hex-key wrench as the Kleenex brand was with tissues – was not producing much of great note in the past number of years.

Armstrong – as you note may be a victim of the success of the Gearwrench brand and loss of its position as an OEM supplier.

Too bad – at one time the big 3 (IMO) USA-Made mechanics tool brands were Armstrong , Proto (then part of Ingersoll-Rand – now owned by Stanley) and Williams (then independent) . Of course you might have also chosen Martin, SK-Wayne and Wright – and of course SnapOn if you were tool-truck-sort-of-guy

I had just last year upgraded my ratchets to armstrong . I will likely pick a few more up now they r done and gone . Was a solid choice for quality at a reasonable price . We pay dearly for stuff up north .

Man that sucks,I dislike seeing any good tool brands go but Allen hex keys and some of the other tools they make just are not on par with other tools in the same class.

Nowadays its really hard to beat Bondhus or Mayhew for hex keys that can take punishment.
In my machine shop those are what we use and they are just plainly made better. The Allen brand ones are just too soft. Armstrong made some great stuff but were a bit pricey. I have a bunch of adjustable arm spanner wrenches from them. May have to switch to Martins now.

Hmm, so what does that mean for Menards’ Masterforce USA-made hand tools? I thought they were made by Allen. As Craftsman switched over to Chinese sockets, I started filling in with Masterforce. Maybe Apex will bring some of the Gearwrench manufacturing back…one can hope?

Originally it was Easco Hand Tools – out of Hunt Valley MD that supplied much of the Craftsman sockets to Sears. When it was acquired by Danaher (I think in 1984) – Easco started making tools under the Allen and K-D brands as well. Then in 2010 Danaher’s tool division was merged into Apex – along with other brands from Cooper – with Apex then being sold off to Bain Capital

One has to wonder how much it cost Sumter County in the first place to secure the original consolidation of those tool groups in their area, and what effect the loss of tax revenue of that many jobs in one drop does to their balance sheets in the short term. The article itself is pretty vague about what is happening, and the only real information that stands out is the reporting of the number of lost jobs, as required by law due to the size of the cut. Too many aggravating questions left unanswered in my view, and I have never truly understood the cost effectiveness of killing a brand over reinventing it.

I must be too far removed from pro circles, because GearWrench has always struck me as a gimmicky-sounding brand name, and the tools, while solid, didn’t seem to offer any reason to pick them over similarly-priced tools. When I hear “GearWrench,” the connotation is similar to that of Ridgid power tools. It screams “mid-priced, Chinese-made tools that are a little better and more reliable than budget-priced, Chinese-made tools.”

Armstrong and Allen, on the other hand, have brand recognition, and I’d think it quite a waste to just scrap that value. I wonder if Ideal or someone like that picks up the Allen brand. I don’t know where Armstrong would go, if anywhere.

A lot of iconic brands that have gone downhill have done so under parent companies that had budget-brand reputations (DeWalt under B&D/SB&D, Milwaukee under TTI, etc.). Others have done so on their own, through various production quality decisions (Craftsman’s OEM/ODM vendor selection, Stanley’s budget-DIY pivot, etc.). Reclaiming the value of these brand names could be a combat multiplier for companies that could acquire them and improve production. I know that wouldn’t apply to every production sector (e.g. cars), but quality tools aren’t just “durable goods” in economic classification, but also in a very literal sense.

I suspect that the Gearwrench tools may have gone through a succession of different OEM’s. When I first saw the brand it was marketed under K-D – the shade-tree mechanic brand that Danaher had acquired back in the 1980’s . I recall that the first Gearwrench tools came from Taiwan

K-D was not a “shade-tree mechanic’s brand.” They were a mechanic’s specialty tool company, where they made solid, innovative tools and did well. They faltered when they tried to expand into standard hard line tools with rebrands. Once the real K-D was shut down, their part numbers were reused for GearWrench.

Yes, GW has done the Taiwan/PRC bait and switch, build a good reputation with Taiwan made tools then move production to China and cash in. I have a set of the earliest China made ratchet wrenches, the chrome flakes off of each one as I use them.

I think I always saw K-D tools at small auto parts distributors and then they seemed to disappear in favor of tools from Lisle. Picking a few of them up over the years – they did not seem to be up to the same manufacturing standard as SnapOn or the industrial brands such as Williams or Armstrong – but I did not necessarily think that they were unfit for purpose.

With only anecdotal information – not recalling seeing a K-D tool in use at an auto dealership or mechanic’s shop – I guess I assumed that their market was mostly the DIY buyers who frequented some of the auto parts places. I was not using the term “shade tree mechanic” as a pejorative – but more as the Urban Dictionary defines it: “A person willing to learn and perform scheduled maintenance or simple repairs on their own vehicle rather than being completely reliant on technicians who may be dishonest, careless, or ignorant. “

Can you elaborate on DeWalt going downhill? When B&D bought DeWalt in 1960, it was a company with one major product (radial arm saws), which they continued to sell for nearly three decades. These days I’d say the brand is pretty healthy.

I agree. What B&D did with Dewalt was remarkable – turning a one-trick pony into a one of the worldwide best selling tool brands. If Brad had made that comment about what they did with Porter-Cable – I’d be more in agreement.

In the case of Milwaukee – my understanding was they were in decline when TTI bought them. TTI had been an OEM in China with no brands of their own as I understand it. They (based in Hong Kong) bought out toolmaker brands like Milwaukee, Ryobi, and AEG so that they would have control of distribution channels for what they were manufacturing. Some pundits argue that this was a brilliant strategy and the company seems to be doing very well by it. The Milwaukee brand certainly seems to be in a strong place in the market – and (IMO) to be continually trying to innovate. While not everything they now market with the Milwaukee name on it seems true to their “Nothing but Heavy Duty” old motto – I would not call the company’s overall progress as going downhill.

People don’t realize without TTI buy Milwaukee from Atlas Copco Milwaukee might not even be around anymore. Milwaukee wasn’t a cordless tool leader at that time what they did have was decent line of corded tools though. Like it or not TTI pumped a ton of capital into Milwaukee to make it a pretty big player in the power tool industry.

By “pumped a lot of capital into Milwaukee” means “shut down most of their US manufacturing and all US based tool design and moved it abroad”, I guess I agree. But, they were very successful at it, and make good tools.

I’ll concede your point, Hang Fire, on Milwaukee’s manufacturing but I can say with absolute certainty that the vast majority of design work, engineering, research and marketing is being done here in the USA. Though, not specifically in Milwaukee, as the company’s HQ is in Brookfield, about a mile or so from the city limits. In fact, Milwaukee is dropping $35 million on a massive expansion of the corporate campus and for the first time I can remember living in this city, is doing brand marketing in the community — serving as presenting sponsor of the new arena construction project (amazing what teams can find to slap corporate names on).

Yeah, I would like to see more things Made in the USA. But let’s face it, those jobs just aren’t coming back. Corporate greed, union labor, federal tax structure … there’s just no way the US will ever be that kind of manufacturing nation anymore. It sucks, but that’s how it is.

But if we can’t have that, I’ll tip my cap to companies that are investing in their community, no matter if their corporate parents are 746252 time zones away.

I’m admittedly a member of the DeWalt RAS cult, but it’s undeniable that emphasis on diversification sacrificed quality. While the quality was still solid through at least the mid-1960s, those models were holdovers that had been engineered by masters (e.g. Wally Kunkel) prior to the acquisition. Even so, quality of select internal components declined earlier in the decade, as did stands, cabinets, and table surfaces. The quality that remained was largely from those previously engineered castings, and when they went away from those, the mass of cast iron precision gave way to poorer tolerances and inflated horsepower ratings. B&D was obviously trying to keep up with Craftsman (Emerson, IIRC) saws in many respects: more of a consumer electronic, and all things to all people, rather than the serious power tool it was meant to be.

Yes, I blame Craftsman for initiating the decline of the RAS, but B&D readily followed suit down the value-brand toilet. First one and then the other eventually landed on stamped sheet metal arms, flagpole-like columns, and gimmicky accessories, and the general perception of the RAS turned to one of it being an inaccurate, hand-eating machine. Toy tool had killed the power tool star.

I’ll grant that DeWalt branched out into other tools, and that may not have happened under AMF or if DeWalt had spun off on its own, but is that really a good thing? Today’s equivalent might be if Stanley were to buy Irega. Sure, the quality might largely remain stable through at least the next product redesign, but a company like Stanley BD doesn’t make that purchase without the idea of capitalizing on the brand name. You’d see Irega stamps on a variety of different tools that bear little or no resemblance to the adjustable wrench, just like DeWalt screwdrivers today, and they wouldn’t be anywhere near the quality (relative to their tool types) of Irega’s adjustables.

From a business perspective, sure, DeWalt has expanded considerably under B&D, but to paraphrase Ron Swanson, they’re half-assing everything instead of whole-assing one thing.

I got into Gearwrench when ratcheting combination wrenches started becoming more widely popular. The brand’s “value” (dollar-for-usefulness) seemed higher than the rest at the time. I still have the first two sets I ever bought (one each imperial and metric) about fifteen years ago. In that time I’ve broken just one, and warranty was handled by one of our local tool truck guys with no fuss.

I also have a number of their 120XP ratchets. They’re 90% of the tool my Snap On dual-80’s are at probably 35% of the cost. I picked up a full 1/4-inch socket kit because the price was right and the case was decent, and it’s easy to throw in my road box. All the sockets are chamfered and the deep sockets are nut holding. Chrome is better than average. Again the 90/35 rule probably applies.

I agree some of their products do sound gimmicky, but many seem geared (sorry for the pun) towards solving some sort of complaint in specialized use of a tool. I believe all my GW have came from Taiwan and manufacturing quality has been fine.

They just weren’t satisfied with having Allen and K-D and Armstrong names on the other hand tools, and wanted a full lineup under one brand, and Armstrong was too high end and Allen and K-D didn’t have the name recognition of Gearwrench once those ratcheting wrenches caught on, so it wound up being Gearwrench everything.

I think Ideal’s aquisition of the bankrupt SK was an example of someeone saving a quality brand. I think the difference is that Ideal is a tool company, not a hedge fund. Their goal is to make a profit selling quality tools, not to bleed the conpany dry and discard it.

imop, i will take my aero and locking flex maxx ratchets any day of the week and twice on sunday over the famed dual 80. too bad they never made other handle options. i would have gladly added long handled , short flex and and compact versions in 1/4 and 3/8 drives. i should pick up the 1/2 versions before they disappear.

let’s take names out for a moment. Armstrong while an old name isn’t that known today -maybe perhaps on industry and the like.

but let’s try this – APEX is fairly big. They have other brands that made/stamped the same things. Anything you have in your hand that was Armstrong – is also ______. Right?

Are some of the other plants staying – that happen to be in other states? I believe this is still true. There will still be American made ____________ out of apex tool group.

Therefore this might be more about closing a plant or 2 that happens to have one or other names on them while keeping others alive. Did they happen to ask the workers if they wanted to relocate? Bits I don’t see in the new story. Also with Craftsman going to SBD there is no need for any contract continuances – so that might be part of why this closing is going on.

I had to look up the Apex branding to see what was there – I think it’s be fine if some of those tools carried the Crescent name, others. When I see Gear Wrench I see made in china – so perhaps that’s a skew on my own.

The retail shopper, for the most part, will probably not know or much care about the demise of either the Allen or Armstrong. Other Apex brands like Campbell , Crescent, Gearwrench, Nicholson, Weller, Wiss, and Xcelite – that have a more ubiquitous presence in the retail market are more likely to be better known. Other brands like Lufkin and HKP which once were well represented in the old-time hardware stores have all but disappeared from the big-boxes. We relied on lots of bits fastening/assembly and grinding tools in our shops from Apex – but they bore brands that don’t show up in consumer outlets – ones like Apex, Cleco and Dotco.

Apex will still have the Craftsman contract, that isn’t going anywhere as long as Sears is still in business.

I suspect that Apex was hoping for a sweetheart deal on the Craftsman brand, and it would be able to manufacture it’s Gearwrench-branded tools under the Craftsman name instead once it owned the rights, but it didn’t really expect SB&D to bid as high as it did and actually wind up with Craftsman.

Maybe Apex was even planning to use the Armstrong/Allen facility to manufacture Craftsman tools in the USA, and when the brand went to SBD it decided to close up shop and just concentrate on making Gearwrench stuff overseas.

Coming on the heels of the announcement of the sale of the Craftsman brand to SBD – this Apex announcement seems too coincidental to be unrelated. You are probably right that Apex or Bain Capital judged that keeping Allen/Armstrong going with SBD owning Craftsman was a not in their best interests.

Someone asked me on Facebook whether there was a tie between this news and the SBD Craftsman acquisition.

There are some Craftsman tools sold outside of Sears, I’m guessing a small fraction being Craftsman Industrial tools. And there are some Craftsman Industrial tools sold by Sears, with the tools looking a lot like the Craftsman Professional tools made in the USA before they sent production overseas and eliminated the Craftsman Pro brand.

That’s really surprising about Armstrong. I though they were being positioned as Apex’s USA made brand. Ever since Crescent was gutted and their production shipped to China it was really just Armstrong carrying the banner.

From another GarageJournal thread I started, a Menards employee suggested that the Gearwrench changeover is because orders weren’t being filled. menards didn’t really want to drop USA made Masterforce wrenches and sockets but shelves were sitting empty and it kinda forced their hand.

Several companies made S-Pattern wrenches. Billings and Spencer made them in open-end – as an example for working on your Pierce Arrow. Half-Moon or Starter wrenches were also popular. I guess the Armstrong ones – will now be replaced by those from Gearwrench.

I should have given the reason for mentioning Billings & Spencer (a Hartford CT Company) – they were inventors of a drop forging process – acquired B&C (an adjustable wrench maker) and rights to Coes monkey wrenches, and Pexto (Peck Stowe and Wilcox) – but were sold to Crescent Niagara in 1962 – before Crescent was acquired by Apex.

It might be for the better. The owners of Allen, Armstrong, Craftsman, and others just don’t care that much about their brands, and haven’t really for awhile now.

The torch should be passed on to S-K, Wright, and other US companies that care about their products being quality and made in the USA.

Maybe in a few years we’ll see a revival of some older brands, or at least the brands themselves will eventually be bought back by owners who will bring them back to their better days. Maybe not and we’ll just have to treasure the old tools and buy newer ones from the newer companies.

SK is the real deal. As is their parent company Ideal. Fred’s correct… I ordered a set of their x-frame ratcheting wrenches a few days ago. I’d been contemplating the order since before Christmas but finally took the plunge! Most of my hand tools are USA Craftsman or older SK but this was my first new SK tools purchase from the new facility under Ideal ownership.

Sorry, meant to say Ideal and must have been looking at the word Apex while typing.

Ideal had to retool completely to bring SK back, then their plans got set back about a year because their brand new factory got flooded. But the new company, and their tooling, has zero relation to Sherman Klove beyond trademarks, branding and trade dress.

Anyone buying SK based on previous experiences is deluded. Take a look at GJ, the new SK tools are a real mixed bag- some perfect, some with bad chrome, some just bad QA that should have never gone out the door.

Allen is to Hex Keys as Kleenex is to Tissues and Coke is to Soda. When a product name becomes synonymous with the product type itself you would think it would be worth keeping in some manner. Tough times…

Mitt Romney made his fortune with Bain Capital and their leveraged buyout, asset stripping and company disintegration is most target’s outcome.
And frankly with the President Elect’s Cabinet nominees I see nothing to slow this trend down one bit.
Certainly not any now provable naive belief in the draining of any swamp. Let alone any predatory but short term profitable Wall Street financed leveraged buyouts.
Ain’t life grand?

You’re obviously correct on the timeline.
My point, obviously, was predatory leveraged buyouts that benefit the few at a cost to the many.
And always remember Romney Care was the precursor to the ACA aka Obama Care and likely if Drumpf gets his way over the Congress and I’m sure he will the new improved ACA to be self proclaimed TrumpCare.
So I wasn’t denigrating ol’ Mitt across the board.

Sad to see such a great brand name I grew up with be tossed by the wayside. Somebody hand me an Allen wrench please! These where great tools and I would buy them over Chineese tools any day. I like USA tools only.! They can keep their gear wrenches!
I would buy a set of ratcheting Allen wrenches over them, even if I had to pay allot more!
I hate seeing junk companies buying good American companies just to gut every dime out of them and lay off all the good hard workers just so they can get thilthy rich!

Allen was a huge name no doubt. However, looking back over my collection after seeing this, I realized most of my hex/allen wrenches are Eklind’s. I even called them allen wrenches for years but heck, they weren’t Allen’s at all. They’ve always served me well and are still American Made. I have an idea that they made some Craftsman stuff too because I have a couple of old Craftsman sets that look identical to the Eklind ones. Like you, I look for Made in USA when purchasing hand tools. I’d prefer that in power tools again as well. You might give Eklind a shot next time you’re in the market for USA Made hex wrenches.

When I think of Elkind – I think of folding hex-keys – and that’s still one of the things they make. It seems that they decided to stick to their knitting – making mostly hex keys, and other socket screw wrenches. Apparently they did not need to expand to make every conceivable sort of tool – and still run their company in Illinois.

Just Google-ing Elkind – I did find this gizmo for older cars that did not warn you that the hand-brake was still applied:

Thanks Fred! Cool info there. I had no idea they did some of that other stuff. You’re right, many of my sets are of the folding type. I think those came from my grandfather so I’d imagine they’re pretty old. Probably 50’s era maybe a bit earlier. Most are Eklind, a couple are Smitty’s out of L.A. California. The ones I bought a good 20-25 years ago if not more were individuals and those are the Eklind ones that mirror the Craftsman models I bought around the same time frame. It was by coincidence that I bought Eklind’s back then and also had the old folding sets of the same name. As I never noticed until now. I was just getting my tool collection going back then.

I’ve never owned the PB Swiss or Bondhus hex keys talked about here often so I can’t offer a comparison to those higher end keys. I do know that what I have has always worked for me. Good enough that I haven’t bought any new in years aside from a set of Craftsman hex sockets. Though I admit I don’t use hex tools daily. Regardless, it’s neat to see Eklind still doing their thing in America after all these years.

Thing is nobody say’s bring me an allen wrench anymore – at least not that I know of. NObody calles hex keys, sockets, or bits – allen. So that name has gone by the wayside. at least with people under 40.

Armstong – other than in a few industrial catalogs have you ever seen that in a store – I haven’t. That’s not saying much but still.

Same issue will apply to proto and williams to a certain degree other than the fact that our local snap on truck occasionally carries the williams stuff or will sell it.

Anywho it might be time the torch was passed on to another. I mean if they don’t see the value in it – but SBD and Ideal do continue to make USA made and branded tools then so be it. YOU know there was a time where there were some 17 US car brands too. Maybe this allows APEX to focus on their other lines.

See, this explains a lot. I learned much of what I learned about tools from my dad. I never knew them as anything OTHER than Allen keys. Most of the my age or younger folks I’m talking to, have no clue what they are (I’m in my mid 30’s).

Growing up in the 40‘s and 50’ – I think that I can count them. The Big 3 (GM, Ford Chrysler) had:
GM (5): Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac
Ford (3 to 5 – depending on how you count the Edsel and the Continental): Continental, Edsel, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury
Chrysler (3 to 4 – if you recognize that Imperial was once separate): Chrysler, Dodge, Desoto, Imperial, Plymouth
Then there lesser brands like Frazer, Henry J, Hudson, Kaiser, Nash, Packard, Rambler, Studebaker, and Willy’s.
Some of these brands got merged, blended or just died out.
I apologize if I missed some lesser brands – but these are the ones I recall.
In the mid “50’s , I had an uncle who had a big Packard, another who had a Desoto and an aunt who drove a Ford. A neighbor had a Studebaker. My dad drove a Buick sedan and my mom a Chevrolet station wagon – switching off from time to time.

Heck, that was just in the U.S… Globally there were/are many others. When I was a kid most Buick dealers stocked GM Opel’s from Europe. I remember dad had one. GM’s Buick and Vauxhall/Opel are still tied together as most Buick cars are rebadged Opel’s now. Then you had Holden (now just a marketing brand like the others). Many Holden’s for years were not only genuine Holden’s but rebadged Chevrolet’s too and now are a mix of Opels/Cherolet’s and who knows what else. Then there was Daewoo which GM rebadged as Chevy’s in the U.S. for a long time. Heck, in the last 30 years they’ve had several others like Saturn, Saab, Hummer, a stake in Isuzu and more.

I think their big brand globally now because it’s so huge in China is Buick. I took a look at the new Chinese built and imported Buick Envision a couple of weeks back. It was really an eye opener as to how different the world is these days. I was told even Chinese Cadillac’s are coming. So many marketing brands of basically the same things and made literally everywhere. Automobiles, appliances, tools… It’s really overkill IMO but whatever makes money I guess.

On an American made vein we’re having a sort of snow day here in Portlandia and I wandered into an Ace Hardware and managed to find everything from extinct Pony Clamps to close out Bosch cutting tools. And, Lordie Lordie , some clearly US made Craftsmen tools.
Maybe these Ace and TruValue type franchises are still worth haunting? If not just for being locally owned businesses but also an untapped source of the odd remaining US made tools! VISA was pleased with my US made purchases. (Okay maybe not so much for the Swiss made Bosch).

🇺🇸 Well speaking of USA tool troubles, the place I buy most of my Dewalt tools is letting go of all their department managers (some I’ve known for years) and I’m sad to say that Lowes is the place I’m talking about. Sad to say that because I love Lowes, but it’s not going to ever be the same if they’re doing what I was told they are. As I was told they plan on also laying off most of their full timers in place of just bringing in seasonal help as needed. 😢

Very true. And I’m sure that’s a big part of it. One only needs to look at what happened to the Sears in store experience the last few decades to see there’s huge negatives in that though. With a part time employee there’s generally very little vested interest in the store, it’s customers, it’s product or it’s future… In contrast, a full time employee generally has a far greater vested interest in the store, it’s customers, it’s product and it’s future.

Sometimes what looks good on paper doesn’t play out so well in real life experiences.

This exact same “customer service” scam was attempted at Home Depot during the reign of Joseph Nardelli after he was overlooked for Jack Welche’s position at GE. He went on to lose Chrysler to Fiat after Mercedes bailed out.
Kinda like a one CEO chain reaction?

Yea, thinking this might come back to bite Lowes. The biggest problem with lowes, is they’re slow to get new items in their store. They don’t hardly have any of the new Dewalt items yet. No Flexvolt yet either. Also their website is a disaster with lots of items miss described. So that alone sends business to their competition. Lowes also forgets each store is a wharehouse that items can be shipped out of to compete with places like Amazon. Hope lowes wakes up before its lo late.

Many analysts say that the biggest problem with Lowes – compared to Home Depot is that Lowes is seen as more of a homeowner’s destination and does not attract the Pro trade as well as HD. Whatever the case – Lowes with slightly more stores than Home Depot reported net income that was only about 1/3 of what HD did. IMO – both companies are profitable, who’s on top with the market analysts seems to change quarter to quarter – but its just may be that Lowes having failed to meet Wall Street’s expectations for the last quarter felt like they had to do something different.

I just love this thread! I took a chance that SK was an earlier OEM for Craftsmen and ordered a couple of odd pliers I’ve been trying to replicate/match to old kinda worn favorite Craftsmen.
Guess what? Except for the green SK dipped plastic handle grips they match!
This is just another reason I love these site.
Thanks again Stuart, fred and all the rest of you guys

This is sad news, but not surprising. Everyone wants things to be cheap, and they don’t care where it’s made. Harbor Freight makes a profit and opens more stores, and Armstrong which has been making tools since the 1890’s will be gone. I also think everyone who bought the foreign crap, especially Gear Wrench, deserve some of the blame. The Apex rep even said, they want to focus on Gear Wrench because that’s what is their biggest seller. But what I don’t understand is that Gear Wrench isn’t very much less expensive than Armstrong. When I read this I bought the Maxx 3/8 ratchet off Amazon, so I could get one before they’re gone (guess I better pick up some repair kits for it too) and it only cost me $38. The Gear Wrench equivalent is $31 on Amazon. But because everyone wants to save 7 bucks, 170 Americans are now out of a job, and an historic tool brand is no more.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes 10 years before the only American made tools are Snap-On and Mac. Speaking of tool trucks, didn’t Matco have a lot of re-branded Armstrong tools? For proof look at pics of the Armstrong Maxx ratchet and a Matco ratchet side by side. So what happens to Matco tools now?

Can’t argue your logic. However, the retail difference in product pricing never ever clearly reflects the manufactured v. landed cost of goods. They (the manufacture/importer) may well “make” two or three times the margins of US sourced nearly identical objects. Sad but true.

I love my Armstrong tools. Great quality and a fraction of the price of some truck brands. (which I also own) I spoke with Armstrong headquarters 2 months ago and was told that they are not shutting down but have discontinued many of their tools which will subsequently be manufactured by Gear Wrench. They told me the sales did not justify the duplication. Hope they were shooting straight with me. Time will tell.